Machine-Type Communication (MTC) is a promising and emerging technology to enable a ubiquitous computing environment towards the concept of “Internet of Things.” Potential MTC-based applications include smart metering, healthcare monitoring, remote security surveillance, intelligent transportation system, etc. These services and applications may stimulate the design and development of a new type of MTC device that may be seamlessly integrated into current and next generation mobile broadband networks such as LTE and LTE-Advanced.
The existing mobile broadband networks were designed to optimize performance mainly for human-type communications and thus are not generally designed or optimized to meet MTC related requirements. MTC specific design are being studied by Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Radio Access Network (RAN) working groups (WGs) for specification support in Release-12 LTE specifications. The studies are focused on lower MTC device cost, enhanced coverage for MTC devices, and reduced power consumption of MTC devices.
To further reduce cost and power consumption, MTC device bandwidth may be 1.4 MHz for uplink and downlink. This value is the minimum bandwidth for an LTE system, which has bandwidths of 20, 15, 10, 5, 3, and 1.4 MHz in the specifications. In some embodiments for MTC devices, the transmission bandwidth for both control and data channels may be 1.4 MHz. Generally, a large number of MTC devices may be deployed for specific services within one cell. When a large number of MTC devices attempt to access and communicate within a network, multiple MTC regions with a 1.4 MHz bandwidth may be allocated by an eNB.